Face to Face: Portraits of the Human Spirit

Alison Wright is an artist with an impeccable eye. Her stunning portraits induce curiosity, compassion, and even delight. Featuring people from across the globe, Wright illustrates perfectly just how many ways we can differ...whether it is clotheing, hairstyles, homes & communities, personal situations, and even values. But through the haunting eyes of each of her subjects, we also get to witness the myriad of ways we are exactly the same. Whether it is caution, pain, joy, sorrow, fear, playfulness...they honestly display common emotions that we ALL experience, regardless of who we are. The exquisite high-resolution photography takes up extra-large pages and is organized beautifully, making this book a treasure I will value for years to come.

Alison Wright captures the pure human SPIRIT that unites us all through her photographs. I love looking into the eyes of people around the world and seeing myself ... seeing and knowing that we are ALL ONE. This has been an incredibly beautiful and heart warming book to have and share with guests in my home. I keep this book on my coffee table in my living room. It has lovingly touched every person who has perused the book in my home. I highly recommend getting this book.

Face to Face is visually stunning, connecting you instantly to people from all over the world through these intimate portraits, while also seeking to inform. I especially appreciated the thumbnail directory at the back of the book, which gives a lot of extra detailed information that you would be interested in knowing but which does not disrupt the seamless experience of flipping through the large portraits that are at the front of the book. Beautifully and thoughtfully put together.

Alison Wright passed away on 23 March 2022 after suffering a cardiac arrest while SCUBA diving in the Azores. She will be missed.

Love it! This book is beautiful and so is the rest of this photographers work. Well done Alison Wright!

Beautiful book, beautiful faces, sensible photographer.

Heard the photographer speak. The book is gorgeous and her adventures are practically Indiana Jones.

This is a book that is over-priced... but wait, there is more to say! The price IS a concern because this book deserves the widest-possible audience. Of course it is true that you often pay for quality and quality (photographs) is what you get with this book. It is just that the price tag will mean that this will be out of reach of many readers! Frustratingly so.The author might be an unknown name to you, yet her work has featured in many "known" publications such as National Geographic Society, Smithsonian, Time and The New York Times as well as many books. In essence this is a book to look at slowly, a book to consume when you have time to explore, consider and think. It is "just" a collection of 200-plus individual portraits taken of individuals around the world. Some famous faces such as the Dalai Lama, some stereotypical poses such as a Japanese maiko and even a "just married" couple kissing inside a traditional British telephone box with some rather odd-looking characters standing by. This book just feels like it keeps on giving, but will you get to see this at home due to the price? Arrrgh!Other than a brief introduction the only text you will find is the picture caption. No lengthy essay about how each picture was inspired and neither (frustratingly so for a photographer) no nuggets of information about how the image was taken. No trade secrets are given away here. A few lines about each picture is gathered together at the end of the book as a "back story" - yet many so-called back stories are just the title, location and the year. Nothing more... Every picture tells a story it is true and this book is a great example of story telling without words, yet is one being greedy to possibly want to know more? It is right to let the pictures do the talking rather than having screeds of text in-between. If you want to read more, read it later elsewhere in the book - but this book leaves you wanting more and then there is no more.Despite the book's (understandably) high price this is sufficiently different, enchanting and oh-so-moreish. At the very least you should encourage your local library to acquire it so you can consult it at home. If you have the spare funds to buy your own copy or should you see it at a price that you feel is too-good-to-ignore then grab it. Looking at a photography book this reviewer likes to flick through and a good test is if something jumps out and grabs your attention with a "what...?" type of reaction. A photograph of two babies in what looked like a dustbin grabbed this reviewer's attention and jammed the metaphorical brakes on. The caption informed curtly "babies in a basket after the earthquake. Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2010" and fortunately the "back story" section gave a little more information. That image is now permanently seared in this reviewer's mind. That is the power of this book.Many photographs are iconic, for so many different reasons. This book manages to deliver. Beg, borrow (but don't steal) it. If it wasn't sacrilege to cut up a book, you might find quite a few pages that you could cut out and frame for your wall... Then you'd need two copies: one for the bookshelf and one for the wall!